Field of Invention
The present disclosure relates to a vehicle lamp, and a method of manufacturing the vehicle lamp.
Related Art
Vehicle lamps that can form a low beam light distribution pattern are known, such as from Patent Document 1 (JP-A-2007-294202). A low beam light distribution pattern is a light distribution pattern that does not illuminate light above a cut-off line extending in a substantially horizontal direction and that is employed when passing other vehicles.
Such vehicle lamps form a light distribution pattern that does not illuminate light above the cut-off line, by blocking a portion of the light emitted from a light source using a shade member with a shape corresponding to the cut-off line of the low beam light distribution pattern.
A high level of shape precision is required for the cut-off line of the low beam light distribution pattern. Precision of the shape corresponding to the cut-off line is thereby generally secured by manufacturing the shade member using resin molding.
A semiconductor light source employing a semiconductor device such as a Light Emitting Diode (LED) is generally employed as a light source in a vehicle lamp. Recently, the output per two, or per one, semiconductor light emitting device(s) is increasing. For example, whereas previously, three semiconductor light sources were installed in a lamp unit to obtain the necessary brightness, in the future it is expected that it will be possible to secure sufficient brightness by installing two or one semiconductor light sources in the lamp unit. Vehicle lamp units are therefore being proposed that can obtain a high light intensity while reducing the number of semiconductor light sources installed to a single lamp unit, for a compact configuration.
Since lamp units giving good visibility can be obtained by installing semiconductor light sources that can emit a large amount of light, there is a demand for vehicle lamps installed with high output semiconductor light sources. However, there is a possibility of a resin shade member disposed near the semiconductor light source being deformed by heat, and a possibility of reducing shape precision of a light-dark boundary line, such as the cut-off line, as the light emission intensity of the semiconductor light source increases.